Cover band folks, how do you set up presets?

How do you set up your presets?

  • Kitchen sink preset

    Votes: 28 40.0%

  • Preset per song with different amp and cab

    Votes: 26 37.1%

  • Same amp and cab all night

    Votes: 16 22.9%

  • Other

    Votes: 14 20.0%
  • Total voters
    70
Dpoirier said:
I don't use an FM3 (axe-II XL user here) but I suppose your question is not platform dependent.
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Similar here, AxeFX III and FC-12.

First off I have a kitchen sink preset on which everything else is based. Within this there is one amp, with 4 channels: clean, edgy, crunch, and lead. There’s one Cab, and it never changes, so no bouncing around to confuse the audience or the soundman.

Based on the kitchen sink I create one preset per song. There are two reasons. Firstly I want the button on the floor to be Verse, Chorus, Solo. With the FC-12 I have the luxury of also having Intro, Bridge, and Outro. Then I can concentrate on playing, and don’t have to think about what changes are happening. The second reason is that I drive our lighting with midi messages from the AxeFX, and I want different colours and tempos and movements for each song.
 
guitarjim said:
I can see that being a problem for karaoke where you are working with a stream of requests. But for live playing, set lists make having a separate preset for each song easy to manage. That is unless you have a lead singer who likes calling audibles. I keep a list of my songs and presets with me for those situations.
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Don't get me wrong - I loved building song-specific presets, mainly because one of my favorite things is identifying and using specific amp tones and effects, and the Fractal gear makes it easy.

I used to play with a Beatles tribute, and the thought of building song-specific presets for that band with the FM3 is really intriguing. But they haven't played out in a while (and there are already 60 or 70 Beatles tributes in my area :) ) so I haven't had the need to go crazy on Fabs material.
 
guitarjim said:
I can see that being a problem for karaoke where you are working with a stream of requests. But for live playing, set lists make having a separate preset for each song easy to manage. That is unless you have a lead singer who likes calling audibles. I keep a list of my songs and presets with me for those situations.
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Up until my recent band addition, I've always had the luxury of setlists. I too now have a list w/preset numbers for the audibles.
 
Some categories...
  • guitar/amp players that sound credible even w/o FX
  • kitchen sink players (you can have one or more sinks, and/or an extra FC)
  • players with many presets that should consider kitchen sink (+optional extras)
  • players with many presets because they want/need to play on a higher level
  • combo of the above
Just pick your category... :)

As too many presets can be a hassle to maintain, I would go for kitchen sinks and some extra presets for songs I want to shine or be closer to the original. I may still be tempted to "preset per song" if I am able to stay at the same firmware (like at the end of development), but will probably regret it...
 
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Just like Grandpa used to say....depends.

Or maybe I should say all of the above? I limit myself to two amps (all channels are fair game) and one cab. I use the setlist functionality to work through the effects on different songs, because I don't want to tap dance or think too much. I have an emergency eject switch which immediately takes me to a utility kitchen sink preset if something goes wrong.
 
I do enjoy the fun and challenge of creating presets based off of specific songs, with those amps, effects, etc. I started that way when I first got my FM3. But I find it so difficult to maintain. That's when I went to more of a kitchen sink preset. I figured since I've been gigging for 26 years with an amp and a few pedals, that I could do the same with the FM3. But then I say to myself, "Then what's the point of having the FM3?" 😂 🤣
 
I use one cab combination across all of my live presets, which avoids sending FOH radically different tones to mix (or remix as the case may be). Right now, I have probably about 10 amp models that I will use depending on the tune, with different amounts of gain and variations in tone settings as needed for different sections of the song. I have a base preset for each amp model that I can treat as a kitchen sink of sorts (or maybe bread and butter is the better metaphor), and will change fx in that patch to create song specific patches. In my FM3, I will save blocks in Edit in the event of me updating something to propagate across patches (like amp or reverb settings). In my Ax3 I use global blocks.
 
I'm kitchen sink w/specialty patches as needed. The different patches w/different amps & cabs doesn't work well imho. It's really hard to dial in the different amps song to song. I get a more consistent sound using one or two amps and pedals. The audience doesn't care if the original was recorded w/a Vox but you're using a Dumble model or whatever.
 
Top40 for hours shows.

I have a main preset kitchen sink and about 10 others specific presets that needs either pitch or very specific effects.

But all got the same amps. This year it was 2203low for clean and breakup and 2203 high for the others.

I’m on the fm3.

Kitchen sink is clean, breakup, crunch, distortion, full lead, crunch lead, breakup lead, clean lead.

Signal path is comp-wha-drive-amp-cab-peq-chorus-delay-verb.

I have a midi controller (xsonic Airstep) for scenes. Switches on the fm3 are for effects.
Forscore on the iPad send midi infos to the Airstep that tells the fm3 the right preset/scenes and witch effects are engaged for the beginning of the song. So no need for setlist.
Everything is done in forscore.
 
Ledvedder said:
I love that preset, but it definitely doesn't work for my classic rock cover gigs.
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I don‘t know that preset. But beeing a Petrucci fan, i can imagine, how it sounds like and what kind of fx are used.
I bet, if you‘d swap out the amp for a plexi 1959slp, it would do the trick.

I usually always end up using that amp with the tv cab for my rock tones. Most of the time its set to edge of breakup. For more gain i use two differently set fas boosts. If i need it to clean up, i dial back my guitars volume a bit.
 
When I was playing guitar and using my FM3, I had one “meat and potatoes” preset that covered about 70% of the songs with basic clean, edge of breakup, OD, and lead sounds. I had an identical one that was pitched a half step down.

Otherwise I would make presets for specific songs.

When I was using my Axe III, I had a kitchen sink preset.
 
Fretboard-Racer said:
I don‘t know that preset. But beeing a Petrucci fan, i can imagine, how it sounds like and what kind of fx are used.
I bet, if you‘d swap out the amp for a plexi 1959slp, it would do the trick.

I usually always end up using that amp with the tv cab for my rock tones. Most of the time its set to edge of breakup. For more gain i use two differently set fas boosts. If i need it to clean up, i dial back my guitars volume a bit.
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I can confirm that swapping the amps works very well with that preset if you want something less gainy and more crunchy. The way Cooper dialed in the effects makes me feel like I'm tossing lightning bolts every time I switch to one of the lead scenes. Amazing stuff.
 
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